Paul Finebaum blasts Florida State's preseason Top 10 ranking as 'all hype' 

The 2024 college football season is nearly here. With that, the AP recently released its preseason poll, in which the Florida State Seminoles are ranked 10th in the country.

It’s a ranking that ESPN college football analyst Paul Finebaum blasted on Get Up, explaining that he thinks it’s all hype. In fact, In 23 of the last 26 seasons, a preseason top-10 team ended the year unranked. That’s a trend that Finebaum believes could continue with Florida State.

“I kind of struggled between Florida State and Penn State,” Paul Finebaum said. “Where is Florida State in the rankings? Are they in the top 10? They’re both overrated.”

Florida State is coming off an unbeaten regular season and the ACC Championship in 2023. Despite that success, the Seminoles were left out of the College Football Playoff, in large part due to the injury suffered by quarterback Jordan Travis.

In 2024, the Seminoles are looking to make it to an expanded College Football Playoff. However, the only way to ensure their spot is to win the ACC. To do that, the Seminoles are going to need to overcome a massive amount of turnover on both sides of the ball after 10 players were selected in the 2024 NFL Draft.

“Quite frankly, Florida State lost a majority of the bulk of its defense and, quite frankly, the schedule — they have Miami and Notre Dame fairly close together on the road,” Finebaum said. “I think this is all hype. I don’t think Florida State is gonna be anywhere near that ranking.”

The schedule is a unique one for Florida State. The Seminoles open the season in Week 0 in Dublin against ACC-rival Georgia Tech. From there, the Seminoles will return home for another ACC game. Later, there will be more conference games against teams like Miami and Clemson. It’s also a challenging non-conference schedule with Notre Dame, Florida, and one of the top G5 teams in Memphis. So, there are plenty of potential pitfalls for Florida State.

Mike Norvell breaks down how Florida State is preparing for Ireland trip to open season

The opening trip to Ireland is a challenging one in terms of travel. So, head coach Mike Norvell is making sure to have Florida State as prepared as possible for it.

“Just to be able to continue in the research in that and it’s one of the things that we’ve tried to do from multiple different sources. Guys who have had experience of it. But also making sure that we’re looking at a variety of different options. Guys that have done it at both levels and different things that they would implement and things that try to eliminate going down the wrong path just through others’ experiences,” Norvell said.

“So, it’s been good. We’ve spent a lot of time at least going into Fall Camp and just our continued work through those systems and what that’ll be that we’re prepared and ready to go when we get to Ireland.”